Data centers are generally centralized facilities that provide Internet and intranet services needed to support businesses and organizations. A typical data center can house various types of electronic equipment, such as computers, servers (e.g., email servers, proxy servers, and DNS servers), switches, routers, data storage devices, and other associated components. Within the data center, switches often monitor the status of other components, such as the servers, in order to make packet forwarding decisions. Limitations on the computing power of a switch, however, can constrain the number of servers that the switch is able to monitor. Not only do the limitations of the switch pose a performance bottleneck, but they can also limit the scalability of the data center.